CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia on Wednesday began pumping
100,000 tons of carbon dioxide underground in a test of carbon
storage that environmentalists said would do little to tackle
climate change.

The CO2 is stripped from a natural gas well but the idea is
to see if the scheme can be expanded to capture CO2 from
coal-fired power stations, whose emissions are blamed in part
for global warming.

Government-backed researchers pumped compressed CO2 into a
depleted natural gas reservoir tomb two kilometers (6,500 feet)
below dairy country in the Otway basin, west of Melbourne.

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"What we'll have is probably the most comprehensive
monitoring program for stored carbon dioxide anywhere in the
world," said Peter Cook, chief executive of the government and
industry-backed CO2 Cooperative Research Centre.

The project is one of a handful in the world, but is far
smaller than a similar project in Algeria's Salah gas field
which is capable of storing around 1 million tons of CO2 each
year in 1,800 meter-deep wells.

Cook said the Australian test plant for so-called
geosequestration would hopefully lead to a larger commercial
plant shipping gas from coal-fired electricity plants to other
underground storage basins, possibly offshore.

It could also eventually help strip out atmospheric CO2
produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal, blamed
for climate warming, he said, and was being assessed by major
greenhouse emitting countries, including the United States and
Japan.

"The project has a very important role in demonstrating the
technical and environmental feasibility of geosequestration to
Australia and the world and preparing the way for its
widespread application," Cook said in a statement. Australian
Greens Senator Christine Milne said the A$40 million ($36
million) project had come no closer to the holy grail of
capturing and removing CO2 emissions from coal-fired power
stations. China, India, Australia, South Africa and many other
nations rely heavily on coal to power their economies.

"Years after being first proposed as Australia's carbon
solution, there has still been no pilot plant demonstration of
capture technology," Milne said.

Australia, which signed the Kyoto Protocol last year, is
the world's largest coal exporter and top emitter per-capita of
greenhouse gases.

Other green groups said much of the technology behind
geosequestration and risks were yet to be tested, including the
possible danger of leaking gas, which can cause asphyxia.

Cook said he was confident the plant was safe as the carbon
was being pumped into a sandstone layer holding CO2 naturally.

But Milne said governments globally would be better placing
their efforts into proven greenhouse-friendly technologies,
such as solar and wind energy.

"Surely we should leapfrog straight into the renewable
energy technologies which don't create pollution in the first
place," she said.